Table Of ContentPierre Gassendi
Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) was a major figure in seventeenth-century philoso-
phy and science and his works contributed to shaping Western intellectual iden-
tity. Among “new philosophers,” he was considered Descartes’ main rival, and he
belonged to the first rank of those attempting to carve out an alternative to
Aristotelian philosophy. In his writings, he promoted a revival of atomism and
Epicureanism within a Christian framework, and advocated an empiricist and
probabilistic epistemology which was to have a major impact on later thinkers
such as Locke and Newton. He is moreover important for his astronomical work,
his defense of Galileo’s mechanics and cosmology, and activity as a biographer.
Given the importance of Gassendi for the history of science and philosophy, it
is surprising to see that he has been largely ignored in the Anglophone world. This
collection of essays constitutes the first book on Gassendi in the English language
that covers his biography, bibliography, and all aspects of his work. The book is
divided into three parts. Part I offers a reconstruction of the genesis of Gassendi’s
Epicurean project, an overview of his biography, and analyses of Gassendi’s early
attacks on Aristotle, his advocacy of Epicurean philosophy, and his relation to the
skeptical tradition and Cicero’s thought. Part II addresses Gassendi as a partici-
pant in seventeenth-century philosophical and scientific debates, focusing espe-
cially on his controversies with Descartes and Fludd. Part III explores Gassendi’s
contributions to logic, theories of space and time, mechanics, astronomy, cosmol-
ogy, and the study of living beings, and presents the reception of Gassendi’s
thought in England.
This book is an essential resource for scholars and upper-level students of early
modern philosophy, intellectual history, and the history of science who want to
get acquainted with Pierre Gassendi as a major philosopher and intellectual figure
of the early modern period.
Delphine Bellis is Assistant Professor in History and Philosophy of Science at Paul
Valéry University, Montpellier, France. She edited, together with Frederik A.
Bakker and Carla Rita Palmerino, Space, Imagination and the Cosmos from
Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (2018).
Daniel Garber is the A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Philosophy at
Princeton University (USA), with additional appointments in History of Science
and Politics. Garber is the author of Descartes’ Metaphysical Physics (1992) and
Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad (2009), as well as numerous articles.
Carla Rita Palmerino is Professor in the History of Modern Philosophy, and
Director of the Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, at Radboud
University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. In 1998, she discovered the last missing
piece of Gassendi’s manuscript De vita et doctrina Epicuri in the library of the
British Museum.
Routledge Studies in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy
18 Experiment, Speculation and Religion in Early Modern Philosophy
Edited by Alberto Vanzo and Peter R. Anstey
19 Mind, Body, and Morality
New Perspectives on Descartes and Spinoza
Edited by Martina Reuter and Frans Svensson
20 Locke’s Ideas of Mind and Body
Han-Kyul Kim
21 Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy
Edited by Dominik Perler and Sebastian Bender
22 Leibniz’s Legacy and Impact
Edited by Julia Weckend and Lloyd Strickland
23 Freedom, Action, and Motivation in Spinoza’s Ethics
Edited by Noa Naaman-Zauderer
24 The Cartesian Semantics of the Port Royal Logic
John N. Martin
25 Locke’s Twilight of Probability
An Epistemology of Rational Assent
Mark Boespflug
26 Pierre Gassendi
Humanism, Science, and the Birth of Modern Philosophy
Edited by Delphine Bellis, Daniel Garber, and Carla Rita Palmerino
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.
routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Seventeenth-Century-Philosophy/
book-series/SE0420
Pierre Gassendi
Humanism, Science, and the Birth
of Modern Philosophy
Edited by
Delphine Bellis, Daniel Garber, and
Carla Rita Palmerino
First published 2023
by Routledge
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Palmerino to be identified as the authors of the editorial material,
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ISBN: 978-1-138-69745-4 (hbk)
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ISBN: 978-1-315-52173-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781315521732
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations x
Introduction 1
DELPHINE BELLIS AND CARLA RITA PALMERINO
PART I
Gassendi’s Epicurean Project, Its Genesis, and Its Sources 19
1 The Life and Work of Pierre Gassendi 21
SYLVIE TAUSSIG
2 Gassendi’s Exercitationes Paradoxicae adversus
Aristoteleos: An Intellectual Biography 41
DANIEL GARBER
3 Gassendi’s Interplay between Skepticism and Empiricism 75
GIANNI PAGANINI
4 Gassendi and Epicureanism 106
SAUL FISHER
5 Tranquility as the Highest Good: Gassendi
between Epicurus and Cicero 144
DONALD RUTHERFORD
PART II
Gassendi the Polemist 167
6 Gassendi in the Philosophical Debate: Stakes of the
Essay Concerning the Principles of Robert Fludd’s
Philosophy (1630) 169
ÉDOUARD MEHL
7 Gassendi’s Critique of Descartes 193
ANTONIA LOLORDO
PART III
Gassendi’s Science and Philosophy in Context 213
8 Gassendi’s Logic 215
RODOLFO GARAU
9 Gassendi’s Theory of Space and Time 241
DELPHINE BELLIS
10 Pierre Gassendi and the New Science of Motion 266
CARLA RITA PALMERINO
11 Astronomy, Cosmology, and the Limit of Empiricism
in Gassendi’s Thought 292
KUNI SAKAMOTO
12 Gassendi’s Theory of Living Beings 312
FRANÇOIS DUCHESNEAU
13 “The Best Philosopher in France”: The Reception
of Gassendi’s Natural Philosophy in England 334
ANTONIO CLERICUZIO
Bibliography 377
Index 406
Contributors
Antonio Clericuzio is Professor of History of Science at Roma Tre
University, Italy. He has published extensively on Boyle and early mod-
ern chemistry, medicine, and matter theory. He is the author of
Elements, Principles and Atoms. A Study of Chemistry and Corpuscular
Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century (2001).
François Duchesneau is Emeritus Professor in History and Philosophy of
Science at Université de Montréal, Canada. He recently published
Organisme et corps organique de Leibniz à Kant (2018).
Saul Fisher is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Associate Provost at
Mercy College, New York, USA. He is the author of Pierre Gassendi’s
Philosophy and Science (2005) and “Pierre Gassendi,” Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008).
Rodolfo Garau is researcher at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
With Pietro Omodeo, he edited Contingency and Natural Order in
Early Modern Science (2019). More recently, Garau edited, with Doina
Rusu, the special issue of Early Science and Medicine “Action at a
Distance in Pre-Newtonian Natural Philosophy” 27/5 (2022).
Antonia LoLordo is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia,
USA. Her publications include Mary Shepherd’s Essays on the Percep-
tion of an External Universe (Oxford, 2020), Locke’s Moral Man
(2012), and Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy
(2007), plus papers on a variety of topics.
Édouard Mehl is Professor in History of Early Modern Philosophy at the
University of Strasbourg, France, and a Fellow at USIAS (University of
Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Studies). He is the author of several
books on Descartes and the rise of Copernican revolution (recently:
Descartes et la fabrique du monde, 2019).
viii Contributors
Gianni Paganini is Professor Emeritus of History of Philosophy at
Piedmont University, Vercelli, Italy, and Fellow of the Accademia dei
Lincei, Rome. He published Skepsis. Le Débat des modernes sur le
scepticisme (2008), which was awarded the Prix La Bruyère by the
Académie Française.
Donald Rutherford is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University
of California, San Diego, USA. He is the author of Leibniz and the
Rational Order of Nature (1995), and many other publications on the
history of early modern philosophy and the reception of ancient phi-
losophy in the period.
Kuni Sakamoto (PhD 2012) is Associate Professor at the School of Arts
and Letters, Meiji University, Japan. The main focus of his research is
on early modern Aristotelianism and Cartesianism. His works include
Julius Caesar Scaliger, Renaissance Reformer of Aristotelianism: A
Study of His Exotericae Exercitationes (2016).
Sylvie Taussig is Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, Paris, France. She is the author of Pierre Gassendi (1592–
1655): Introduction à la vie savante (2003) and the French translator
of several of Gassendi’s works and his Latin Letters.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the financial support we received for the
preparation of this book from the correction subsidy fund of the Faculty
of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at Radboud University;
the Center for the History of Philosophy and Science; and the GASSENDI
project funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (PI Delphine
Bellis, project number ANR-19-CE27-0004).
We would also like to express our gratitude to Manon Lambooij for
preparing the index of names, to Omar Hraoui for his precious help with
the bibliography, and Brian Clarke for the care and proficiency with
which he conducted the copy-editing of the volume.
The idea for this book was first suggested to us by Mihnea Dobre
(University of Bucharest). We would like to thank him for having
prompted us to realize this project and hope that the result will meet his
expectations.
